Ghosts
by saichanlovestoad
Summary: I will never know what the worse thing I've ever done is, because I don't remember doing it. I was sixteen, lost in a world that wasn't mine, and I did something terrible. . . Butters POV.


A/N- I do not own South Park. This fic was written purely for fun and I am in no way making money off it.

I wrote this to show how I see Butters and Eric's relationship.

Butters POV.

* * *

I will never know what the worse thing I've ever done is, because I don't remember doing it. I was sixteen, lost in a world that wasn't mine, and I did something terrible. The memory has been erased from my mind by half a bottle of tequila and two big, red glasses of a drink called Hunch Punch. The booze wasn't my idea. I only drank the Hunch Punch as I was told to. I don't recall drinking the tequila at all, as it came after the punch, and by then, I was tossing my shoes over the fence since that seemed like such a great idea at the time. What happened after that was not my choice. It was not my decision to leave the party. It wasn't even my decision to go to the party.

Those were Eric's decisions. He made all my decisions for me when I was sixteen. Until that night, actually, he had made all my decisions since fourth grade. That's when we became friends. Or, as close to friends as anyone can be with someone like Eric Cartman.

Eric is like an earthquake. There is no way to predict anything he does; only to gauge the damage when he's done. He is a force of nature. Someone who has no control over anything he's ever done simply because he never learned what self control was. He had always been like that. When he was nine, he was a loud mouthed brat who talked about things he shouldn't. He got in trouble, but he liked trouble, so it really didn't matter. All the things in Eric's life that are supposed to make you decent were messed up. His mother was a crack whore. His father was murdered, by him. The balance in his life never existed, since the scales were never tipped in his favor.

People were always under the impression that Eric was 'spoiled'. He was, I suppose, but he wasn't. He got whatever he wanted, true. Yet, the price he paid for it was severe. I'll never know the whole extent of the trauma. The night I found out the majority of it is the night I recall the least from. Before that, I saw only mere glimpses of it. Eric would say something strange with a vaguely haunted look on his face. Every time he did, I would feel a chill and have to check the room for ghosts. The only ghosts were the memories lurking behind his dead honey eyes, though. They stalked him throughout his life. I saw them peering around the corner, sneaking up on him when he least suspected it. That's when his eyes would lose their life in a self inflicted suicide he couldn't protect himself against.

Eric disarmed was a scary thing to behold. He never cried, which was one of the worse parts. He would just relive his personal horror, his hands pressed over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut. When that happened, I wasn't there. I ceased to be there, clutching my pillow, and silently wishing my only friend wasn't so broken. With every new crack, another piece of him shattered and disappeared. Growing up, I watched Eric die, and there was nothing I could do to help. He would just lower his hands when the screaming eased away and stare at the wall. In time, he would be able to suppress it again, and we could go back to whatever we had been doing. He never spoke about it and I wasn't supposed to bring it up. I never did. Somehow, I knew the whole time, I really should of. Maybe if we had talked about it, whatever it was, just once, he wouldn't have gone and shot that poor girl.

That's the only thing I remember about that night. I don't remember much about the party. It was another high school rager in Token's backyard. His parents were out of town or something. Someone got their hands on a keg and everyone was drinking those plastic cups of Hunch Punch, whatever that was. Eric took me there. He called me up at near to eleven at night, said I was to come right over, and as soon as I did, he grabbed me and dragged me on over. I didn't want to go. I never wanted to go. I never wanted to do these sort of things. Eric just convinced me anyways. He had convinced me to steal that teal tank top. He had convinced me to lie about my failing grade in science. He had convinced me that going to that party would be fun. He said 'bitchin'', but that meant fun in Ericnese.

I don't know how 'bitchin'' it was. The music was loud. Some heavy metal rock band from an underground circuit that I'd certainly never heard of before. Everyone from school was there. At least, I think they were. I saw most of my classmates, hanging out or getting drunk or both. I know it was Kenny McCormick who shoved that first glass of Hunch Punch into my hand. He was pretty renown for his drug abuse habits, seeing how I'd been at most of his rehab interventions and whatnot. He gave it to me, but it was Eric that made me drink it. Kenny just handed us drinks, then darted off to go do something he called a keg stand. I didn't know what that was and I still don't. I never got to ask. As soon as I had my drink, Eric was chugging his and telling me to do the same.

Hunch Punch tastes disgusting. It's somewhere between licking a rusty pole in winter and drinking nail polish remover. There's a burning sensation that runs from your mouth to the back of your throat and down to the very core of your stomach. I can't imagine tequila tastes much better. I wouldn't know. I don't even know where the bottle came from. I just remember being told later that I'd drunk half a bottle. I don't know who drank the other half. I can just assume it was Eric.

He was with me the whole time, after all. He was laughing mostly. He's not the mean drunk people think he is. He gets hysterical usually. Before then, I'd never been drunk with him. I'd just seen him drunk. Eric liked to get drunk on the nights I slept over at his house. I came in my baby blue pajamas, with Uno cards, and an old teddy bear I thought would keep the bad dreams away. He wore some old jeans and a tank top. He didn't have any teddy bears. He had a bottle of Grey Goose that he drank from the head. He'd guzzle down half the bottle in about an hour or two. That's when I would figure out we weren't going to be playing Uno. He would just spend the night drunk off his ass, laughing at nothing, and I would pretend I wasn't scared shitless of what he might do. Eric drank a lot in our early years in high school. I knew it was a way to fight off the memories that lurked in the depths of his mind. I just never said anything about it.

I _never _said anything.

That night was no exception. I don't recall what or how much he drank. Eric wasn't very obvious about it. He would have a glass and he would go though it in just a couple swallows. Eric isn't as tiny as me, so he can drink more before he's stumbling and slurring his words. I weighed less then one hundred and twenty. One big glass of Kenny's spiked Hunch Punch and I was reeling. With two in me, I was falling over my own two feet and spilling my drinks down the fronts of guests. Eric's a lot bigger. He has a nice, fat stomach, and he can drink about five glasses without nearly the same effects. Unfortunately, when I'm drunk, I don't try to stop him, so he gets his hands on the harder stuff. I think that's when the problems started that night.

The last thing I even slightly remember before the gunshot is stripping off my shoes and throwing them over Token's fence. I think I was doing it as a dare or bet or something. Either way, I wasn't wearing my shoes when Eric grabbed my arm. He was borderline drunk. That's when he isn't aware he's drunk, but I am. He talks really loud and he laughs a lot and he really doesn't think about anything he's doing or done. He didn't think then. He just pulled me off, giggling, and pointing to the distance. I went with him. He probably said I had to. He used that line a lot when he wanted me to do things I thought were wrong.

There's no wrong or right with Eric. He doesn't have morals like real people do. I don't know where he lives, but it's not in the same society I grew up in. His world frightens me most of the time. He doesn't set up white chalk lines that are never supposed to be crossed, no ma'am, not no way, no how. I have mental ones like that. I will never kill someone. I will never betray my friends' trust unless it's in their best interest. Those are my biggies. Eric doesn't have anything like that. With him, nothing is written in stone. There's no golden rule. He just has 'standards' that he constantly readjusts to fit the new boundaries of his life. He used to say he would never sell out his friends. He did that. Then he said he meant he would never sell out me. He did that too. Then he just said he would never sell out himself. But he did that too. In the end, he told me I'd misunderstood what he was saying and to knock it off. I always 'misunderstood' what he was saying, apparently, since he said that about everything in due time. I wasn't misunderstanding anything. Problem was, he didn't know what he was saying to begin with.

Eric never knew what he was saying. He was an actor if there ever was one. When I was a child, I thought he just knew everything about everything. We could be doing the most outlandish things and he would act like he knew what to do. He would laugh whenever I voiced any form of concern. Well being, safety, caution, those were laughable jokes as far as he was concerned. I thought he was just head strong. Really, I did. Eric didn't like to admit he was wrong, so I figured when things turned out bad, he was just too embarrassed to say he had done something different than the first time. It never crossed my mind that there had never been a first time. I didn't even entertain the idea that he might never have tried something. This was Eric Cartman. He had done everything and he had somehow walked away from it all with only stories and confidence.

It would be years before I figured out he was merely a liar. Mr. Mackey, the school's guidance counselor, said he was a pathological liar. Eric had delusions of grander and might have suffered from schizophrenia. That's what was written in his personal permanent records. I was fourteen when he stole those files to see what was written down because his mother had suggested sending him to see a professional. He told me that day that professional help was a 'fuckin' waste' of time. The day I read that, peering over his shoulder, standing in a puddle of dirty water in the janitor's closet, I had believed him. I thought Mr. Mackey was full of shit and Eric was one of the sanest people I had ever known.

Almost exactly a year later, Eric would throw me on the ground, screaming for me to stop telling him what to do, and I would cry as he broke my arm in two places with a hockey stick he snatched out of the closet. He wouldn't remember doing it. He would tell the police and my parents that he swore he was at his house and he was yelling at someone he called Porter. His mother would cry and say he needed clinical help. Eric would scream at her and be arrested for assault. He would be acquitted of all charges because I refused to testify. I wouldn't want to state in open court, for all ears and records to hear, that I thought my best and only friend needed professional help.

But I would know then that Mr. Mackey had been dead right. Eric needed help, but I knew better than anyone that he was never going to get it. At least, not until it was too late.

That night was the too late I knew was coming. Eric was a liar and he lied his way into convincing me to leave that party. I don't need to remember anything that was said to know that. He didn't have any wrongs or rights, so he had no issue telling me whatever it was he needed to tell me to get me to stumble out of that backyard. I don't really have any memory of walking down that road towards the pond that us South Park kids hung out at during the summer. I know that I was barefoot by then, however, as my feet were badly scratched up. There are broken bottles all along the side of the road, so I must of cut myself pretty badly. I also know that Eric lead the way. He usually does. He pretends he knows where he's going, and even though I know now that he never does, I let him walk me around in circles. I had drunk two glasses of Hunch Punch. I didn't have any conscious thoughts concerning my being dragged into something terrible.

As it is, after that, I can recall nothing. There is only a deep, dark black pit that drops into my memory like a bottomless hole. Somehow, it feels like a black hole in space. Something that consumes anything that gets near it. I was unaware that a memory could possess such life like qualities, but it does. It sucks me in every time I think back to that hot, sticky night in July. I can see nothing when I look inside, yet every time, I see something different. It sits there, in my mind, mocking me and crying out. Try as I might, there is no recalling the memories it has stolen from me. In the middle of it, I see a flash I recognize as a gun going off, but it might just be a fabricated memory from what I've heard. Otherwise, it is a great nothing. A nothing that weighs so much more than any something in my mind.

The police report and something Kenny McCormick said has pieced the rest of the night together nicely for me, though. Ken said that he was puking in the bushes when we were leaving. Said Eric had his arm around me and was holding a nearly full bottle of tequila. His statement doesn't include much else. He might have seen or heard something, but the drug charges he was slammed with that night wiped it from his memory. I heard later that what happened by Stark's Pond got the whole party busted and Ken was one of the people charged with possession.

The reports piece together the rest of it. Eric and I made it from the party to the edge of the town's park that leads to the pond. The bottle of tequila was found thrown in the bushes there. I can assume we drank our way through it during the walk. I don't know how long it took for us to get from point A to point B, since I have no idea what time it was when we left the party, and neither does anyone else. It was after midnight, they think. The only time frame I have at all is that at close to two in the morning, Eric fired a single gunshot into a girl's stomach.

I don't know where the gun came from. He might have had it on him the whole time. I've known since fourth grade that he was in possession of a hand gun whose make and model I never knew. She might have had it or we could have found it. Either way, she stated that we came across her at a camp site where she was with a couple girlfriends. She said that it was obvious we were drunk and she believed we were trying to pick her up. I don't doubt that's what Eric was trying to do. Ken lost his virginity in freshman year and ever since, Eric had been wanting to do that same. What she said next, though, I find difficult to swallow. I can't say I don't believe it, since I do, but I find it incredibly hard to accept. Mentally, I have mostly suppressed that portion of the report. Every now and again, however, it does slip into my thoughts. It hits like a brick smashing through glass at the most unexpected times as if to remind me of the terrors of my toxic friendship with Eric Cartman.

She told police that Eric squeezed that trigger with absolutely no provocation.

She never even responded to the pick up lines we reportedly hurled at her. She had just been standing up on her star gazing towel when he shot her. Her friends had heard the noise and had come running out to see what was going on. Eric didn't fire any more shots. One girl said that he dropped the gun and started to laugh. I don't remember any of this. I was standing next to him, though. That same girl told police that I was shaking badly, but was completely unresponsive. In a few minutes, they had called the cops and flashing red and blue lights were tearing down the mountainside. Eye witnesses testified that I slumped to the ground and passed out cold before the first patrol car rolled onto the scene.

Eric was arrested for attempted murder in the second degree. I was rushed to the hospital in the second ambulance that arrived at the lake. My first black out was accompanied by my first stomach pumping.

When I came to, I was laying on my bed in my pastel blue room, dressed in an oversized black tee that, ironically, belonged to Eric. My parents took me down to the station to give my statement as soon as I could walk from the kitchen counter to the table without swaying. They didn't say a word the entire trip. My father stared so hard at the road, I thought he was going to burn a hole in it. My mother just stared at nothing. I wouldn't know for several years how ashamed and terrified they were for what I had been apart of that night. Right then, I just wanted to cover my face and find a hole to die in. I wish I could say that I was worried about that poor girl, but I wasn't. At that moment, I didn't know what had happened. I didn't even know why I was going to the station downtown. I just had a wicked headache and my stomach wanted to ooze out my nose. All I wanted was to punch Eric for taking me to that party before sleeping for twenty years.

I think the worse part of what came next was the sheer knowledge that I had no memory of it. The officer was named Brandon and he tried to be patient with me. He thought I was an accessory to attempted murder. I didn't need anyone to tell me so. I felt it in every dark glance he shot me. But I wasn't. If I was, I still don't recall any of it. As far as I know, Eric didn't plan for any of it to happen. He wasn't the type to make plans. That was all I kept saying in his defense. Eric Cartman didn't make plans. He did, but they didn't need to know that. So, I just held my head, shivered in the cold, and stuttered out he didn't make any plans ever, no sir, nah-uh, more times than I have ever said anything else.

I always ended up saying some bull shit line in Eric's defense. He didn't talk to cops much, but he expected me to. I was his character witness. I spoke on his behalf about how much of an upstanding person he was when he wasn't. I said he was a nice guy, but he never has been. I've told people he was just a troubled loner, when I knew he really was, but that had nothing to do with what I was saying it for. That morning, I said he hadn't planned anything, because he probably hadn't, but that's not what they were asking. Brandon wanted to know if Eric was capable of planning something like attempted murder. The girl's own testimony sort of said that he hadn't gone out there planning to shoot anyone. Our tox screens said that we hadn't been in our right minds. He knew too that Eric probably hadn't planned this. That's why he wanted me to say he was capable of it. So he would have a case against my only friend. I told him he was certainly not capable of such an awful thing.

But Eric Cartman was definitely capable of it. I just didn't say anything about that.

My testimony meant nothing to anyone but Eric. My parents thought I was lying and Brandon knew I was. They couldn't prove it, but they could feel it in the way I looked away as I talked. Eric, though, was the person I was talking to. He would have been so furious if he knew I had said anything different. When I was sixteen, that was the worse thing that could happen. Eric being mad at me was the emotional equivalent of losing my parents to a freak accident. I couldn't handle it, so I lied. He had taught me how to. I just pretended I was acting in a movie and my one line was so crucial to the production of that one scene that I had to keep practicing it. So, I did. I kept on saying it until the director yelled cut and I was free to leave and collect my paycheck.

That was the trial. I sat down on the witness stand. I was called by the defense to testify to Eric's character and as a material witness to the crime. The questions were simple enough. I told the jury how I knew Eric and how long we had been friends. The lawyer in his shark grey suit told me to tell the good people there just what I remembered about the night in question. I lowered my eyes and said nothing. I told them about the two drinks of that nasty Hunch Punch and throwing my shoes over the fence. Then I just said that I didn't remember a single, solitary thing after that. Mr. Defense asked me about Eric. He asked if Eric had ever done anything like this before. If I thought he had planned this. If I thought he was an evil little boy of sixteen who needed to be sent to real men's jail for a really long time. That's when I cashed my check.

Like Eric taught me to, I broke down in tearful sobs with big, fat puppy dog tears running down my cheeks. In those sobs, I choked out that no, never, Eric was my bestest best friend and he was the nicest guy I'd ever known. I gushed out how sweet he was and it was all that disgusting, foul, awful liquor he'd been drunk on that had made him do it. The liquor made him do it. Oh, how terrible an idea it had been to drink that night. I sobbed into my hands about how I had suggested we go to the party, to be cool, as Eric hung his head in shame on cue. We didn't need to rehearse this routine. We'd done it a thousand times before. I exonerated him of as much blame as I could manage and he put on an ashamed act.

We'd been doing this since fourth grade. The first time was when Eric ate the cookies my mother had baked for the school bake sale. She had happened upon us in the kitchen just after Eric had told me not to tell her anything. I had been horrified, but I had stumbled through a cock and bull story. I choked out how I hadn't known the cookies were for the bake sale. The second she looked like she wanted to roll her eyes, I broke down in sobs. I had pointed at Eric and exclaimed that his mommy never, not ever, made cookies and I had just thought what a wonderful idea it would be to give him some. I told her that he thought they were so good, we should give them to all the other kids, and we had, so now, we had no more cookies. Back then, my mother had bought that story.

That day, the jury bought that one.

They knew he was guilty of the crime, but they didn't believe it had been attempted murder. Eric was said to be not guilty. I think it was a mixture of my testimony and his intoxication that won the defense's case. The other side just couldn't prove that Eric was enough of a psycho to have planned to get drunk enough to muster up the courage to do something awful like shooting someone. No matter what they did, they would never be able to prove that. I knew that Eric certainly didn't need to be drunk to do something like that. I kept that to myself, though. As far as they knew, and as far they needed to know, was that Eric was not capable of such things.

Eric didn't thank me for what I'd done. I hadn't expected him to. He just patted my shoulder and got into the backseat of his mother's car. I waved good bye, watching as she drove him back to the home that had warped him.

I didn't talk to Eric much after that day. We went our separate ways, as the saying goes. I slipped in with the clique of boys run by Craig Tucker. I spent the next two years of high school sitting on the front porch of Craig's house, sipping coffee from Tweek Tweak's family owned shop. I listened to Clyde Dovovan complain about his parents and smiled whenever Token Black told me about the wild party I had missed out at his place. Eric spent most of the next two years with Kenny McCormick. They went out at night and spray painted houses with obscene cuss words. They were regulars at the parties I 'just couldn't make it to'. I heard once that they both got what everyone called 'dead drunk' and ended up in the emergency room to get their stomachs pumped. Eric never shot anyone else, so no one saw the trouble with it. No one but me.

I didn't remember a thing about that night, but, deep down, I knew what had happened. I took one look at the picture of that girl and I knew. She was a pretty girl, sure, but she was hideous in a way I knew Eric saw. She had long, deeply brunette hair, wide eyes, and she was wearing a bikini the night she was shot. She looked like a dirty slut. I thought so when I saw her, nursing that headache that very first day in the station. I told Brandon that Eric hadn't planned to shoot her, but, I knew it was a lie. That girl, whatever her name was, she was a dirty slut and he sure as hell meant to shoot her. Sure as rain was wet. He had cocked that gun and squeezed that trigger, but she wasn't on the end of that lead bullet when he did it. I guess that's the only way I can sleep at night. I know who he saw, so I can just shrug it away.

After all, I never did know just how badly Eric was traumatized. Like I said, the night I found out just how much is the night I remember the least from.

Two years later, though, I realized that what had happened with that girl wasn't the worse thing that happened. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I found out. At three am on Saturday morning, Eric Cartman put three bullets into his mother's face. Then he ate his gun. Kenny McCormick found the bodies when he went over to see if Eric wanted to go down to Stark's Pond for some fun harassing girls. The neighbors said they had heard screaming, but hadn't thought anything was wrong. They heard screaming from the Cartman's place all the time. As for the gunshots, they all said they hadn't heard anything like that. They were lying.

I went to his funeral, but I declined the offer to speak. There was nothing left to say. I had never said anything and I continued to do so. Instead, I tuned out as people pretended to cry over the psycho brat they had never known. Ken and I were the only ones who knew him. Ken didn't say anything either. He just did the sign of the cross and tossed a rose on the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. I stayed behind. I didn't want to drop my fragile white rose down on that black tomb. Somehow, I was terrified of what he would do to it. I feared he would rip the innocence away like he had torn mine from me in a single evening of liquored abysses.

That's when I realized the worse thing I had ever done. It hadn't been lying on the stand. It hadn't been watching and letting him shoot that poor girl. It hadn't been drinking those two Hunch Punches. It had been letting Eric kill himself. I have no memory of doing it, as the majority of the night is a cold blank. Yet, I did it as sure as he had put that silver barrel in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. I don't know if I did it when Ken gave me my first taste of bitter booze. I don't know if it was before or after I tossed my shoes haphazardly over the fence. I don't know if it was during the walk to Stark's Pond I can't recall. But I did it. I failed to say the one thing Eric needed so desperately to hear.

I never said no.

Maybe, just maybe, if I had said no, just once, he wouldn't have shot that girl. We wouldn't of stopped talking. We would have been friends right up to the very end. I might have been able to see it coming, that morning after my birthday when the ghosts finally caught up with him. I could have said something to help. But I never said anything. I had let him take me down the path of no return and in return, I walked away. I had seen for myself just what he was capable and I had run for cover.

I can't say it wasn't for the best. I am twenty one now. I am in my third year at college. I'm getting my PhD in psychiatry with a minor in ethics. In a year, I will be getting married to a wonderful girl who will never know that when I was sixteen, I got drunk at Token Black's illegal rager and witnessed an attempted murder. She will never know I sat on the witness stand and lied to the entire court and said it wasn't attempted murder. She will think my childhood friends are upstanding people like Craig Tucker, Clyde Dovovan, and Tweek Tweak. She will think I am studying the human mind to help troubled teenagers escape a tortured environment. She will never, ever know I am trying to help the one person I let suffer until the point he literally couldn't suffer any longer. She will never, ever know I ever knew any one named Eric Cartman.

But that night will haunt me. Just like the ghosts that haunted him.

I never dropped my white rose into that grave. I pressed it's fragile petals into a book I titled 'Eric' and I shut the cover without writing a word on those endless pages. That book sits on my bookshelf, crushed between thick volumes of studies on children diagnosed with schizophrenia. Those books say that those sufferers are rarely ever violent. That's why I believe he didn't suffer from it. He was just tormented. That thin journal with his name is my tormented reminder of the importance of speaking up. My constant ghost whispering in my ear, in his unmistakable accent, 'What if'.

What if I had just said no? Then what?

That is a question I will never know the answer to. Because the night I could of found out, I can't recall a thing from. All thanks to Eric Cartman.


End file.
